Archive for January, 2012

I came out into the pasture to say hi while Baby and Nessie were cushing side by side. Nessie got up immediately to come and see me, but Baby felt satisfied with staying down. I walked nearer to Baby and Nessie followed. Here you can see Baby telling Nessie he doesn’t feel comfortable with her too close to him while he’s in a vulnerable position. Nessie doesn’t really seem to be getting the message though…

Yesterday, I moved Baby from his temporary pen back out to the pasture with Nessie. Which means I felt he was strong enough to compete with her and well enough to walk a greater distance to get to his food and water. It made me very happy to see him in there with her again and even though Nessie was pastured just across from the pen, I think she missed physically interacting with Baby a lot.

The last several months have been extremely stressful for me and there has been times where I was worried that Baby wouldn’t recover at all. That he was slowly dying. Seeing him back out in the pasture today gave me a visual testament of how far he’s come. Last month, I couldn’t have imagined putting them together again, but tonight they were able to eat again together in peace.

However, Baby’s still a long way from being 100% and I’m going to have to watch him closely. If he begins dragging his legs again, even sporadically, he’s going to have to be penned up again. It’s unclear to me whether his muscles need to be worked or left to recover in a smaller area, but I believe he needs to exercise them to re-build them. Mentally, the pasture is much better for him, too. The pen was small and didn’t provide him with enough stimulation. Now, he’s able to live like he’s meant to live: grazing the land side by side with his own species.

Every year I give Baby fruit on his birthday and buy him a beads for around his neck. This year I made him an ‘ice cake’ by freezing water mixed with juice in layers which contained different fruits and vegetables. It was a very nice day and I think Baby enjoyed his gifts and recognized that it was his special day again.

You can see in this video that his health is greatly improving. I can notice that he’s limping in his back legs, but it isn’t very apparent. Before, they were so stiff and hard for him to move that he’d drag them sometimes. I haven’t seen him do that in awhile now.